dee_readingnews

When I got a brief for task 3, I decided I was going to take a much more planned route in animating the dee rig character. Firstly I spent the entire evening acting out different emotional scenes of different changes in emotion and mood. The first one I went for was a guy lifting a liquid container and getting frustrated over not being able to lift it and then getting angry.I did not like this so I tried a guy screaming for joy after standing round in anticipation, I did not like this either so I tried someone waiting around and then going insane and I still didn't feel like i had captured two emotions. Then sitting on the side I saw my payslip from work, which when I had received I was majorly disappointed with an angry and so I thought this could make a good scene. So acted out me opening a letter and shaking it and screaming for joy and then realising that it's bad news and then suddenly freaking out. The second thing I did was to draw all the major keyframes by hand so I could get an understanding of the line of action I would need to use. And on some of these drawings i drew the main line of action and made sure that they were balanced poses. Thirdly when I first went to maya I took the key poses and every 10 frames put the character into these key poses and move them around accordingly to get the timing roughly right and also to make sure I had strong key poses, which I think I achieved quite well. I then went on to fill out the inbetweens and correct any translations and rotations that were odd. All this took quite a lot of time and I got quite frustrated with yet again making too many key frames, so i went back and sift out the unnecessary key frames. I had a bit of trouble getting their arms to independently yet in the right place at the right time when he first holds the paper up but I got a hang of it in the end. Even so the arms did look like they were glued together on the piece of paper, so i varied the timing of each arm slightly but i dont think it was enough. The anticipated pause of him reading the note in shock i believe was the right amount of time, but i had to fiddle around with the timing quite a bit first. Overall the stamping I felt very robotic matter how much I try to tweak the movements of each leg individually and the arms also a bit of a challenge to not have them looking robotic.Despite this i think the timing was okay the balance in the leg moving back and the stamping and as a result I think I achieved by most fluid animation so far with good lines of action and a good silhouette and I think it is believable as most people are able to tell what he's thinking and I think I've learned from this. I now just need to practice applying these principles some more. Lastly the shrug of the shoulders at the end I only put in to try and finish the piece nicely but I can see now that with this there is a little too much going on and for it to work there would need to be a greater pause on the shrugging and staring at the audience and acknowledging that they've been watching and that he thinks "so what" to the judgement of the audience, but as this would be a key moment in itself it would require anticipation also which i have not put in.

weightlift

dee_weightlifting

I quite enjoyed getting Dee to lift my big atlas ball, i was going for the whole sumo man pose when preparing to lift the weight, but didnt put enough enthasis on this. I did think the initial anticipation and the initial lifting of the weight were good of the character feeling the weight, but i think my lift tended to go down hill from there i started over keyframing parts again so i couldnt fix them very easily and i think this shows in the animation, which is something i will address when i get the character set working next time. I do however think the initial lift was quite good and the characters reactions were good in the back and the head and the eyes showing his strain lifting the atlas ball. Though from this point his waist and balance are not in alignment and you can clearly see that he is off balance for the size of the Atlas ball. I tried to correct this but due to over key framing of the arms and hands and also fingers so that they did not go into the ball I ended up having to fidget his hands in relation to the ball as it was. I realise now that a lot of my errors in this are due to not planning out the main keyframes for each body part at the particular keyframe. The second lift I couldn't get right due to the same problem as above with too many body rotations in the back and legs and arms. Also to note for future referene, I need to keep an eye all individual body parts us not moving key joints can make body appear as though it is nailed to the wall. E.g. The legs, the waist, head and back. When the character comes to dropping the ball, I think the speed of the ball was right but the character feels lifeless from this point on as he slowly lifts his arms in celebration. I think the timing of the arms lifting in celebration was right but they are too close together and give him a robotic feel and therefore could do with being a few frames apart to give that individual feel for each arm. These are things I'll try and take note of the future reference when animating with the rig or any other rig that matter.

walk hard

my walking animation this term i was quite happy with. After blocking it out and then getting the basic timing of my swanking head bopping walk i added in some hand jestures to make it more fluid which i was happy with. Though i feel i could have put much more of a emphasis on the swank and the head bopping. I tried to get the animation looping but i couldnt get him to return to the initial pose as i had key framed way to much stuff in the process. This is something im going to try watch out for when key framing in the future. I think the timing on the wink is good however and if you were to silhouet the walk you would still be able to see him with a little swanking along walk and a pointing at someone in echnoledgement.

big Z modelling

here are some images during the making of my big Z model

the dawn of a new age...the second year !!!!

over the summer ive done some drawings while travelling abroad and about the place in my sketch book and at work drawing the odd customer. Ive taken a whole string of photos capturing the summer and some beautiful scenes home and away abroad making for great settings. Ive also finally started the maya foundation book for 2008.
Ive done the first project of making a house for big z from surfs up, which was easy but good for me to recap on my basic animating and modelling and texturing.




I then went on to model big Z from a cube to his full body shape below are some photos of the process which ive now completed with hair and all i next have to texture him. I think the model went well though the overall shape could be improved a bit more and smoothed out, also the hair is a bit wierd but for my first attempt at hair i think i did ok. Im looking forward to seeing what he will look like textured on my model.
Though with the current tasks of modelling my own face and getting back into the swing of doing a animated walk and starting a sketchbook of conversations and interaction project i will probably wont get round to texturing bigz for some time now.

final animation

i think our final animation was quite successful though would be nice to tweek it a little more and go into a little more detail with the models and things and get closer and definately see it in colour would be good.